Herman Mashaba. Photo: Phill Magakoe/Getty Images
ActionSA president Herman Mashaba trusts the Patriotic Alliance (PA) more than his coalition partners in the Democratic Alliance (DA), he said this week.
ActionSA is one of several parties that has joined the Multi-Party Charter, initiated by the DA, in the hopes of unseating the ANC in this year’s general election.
Mashaba told the Mail & Guardian that his party had left the “door open” to work with PA leader Gayton McKenzie, adding he would rather have the PA than the DA as a partner.
“When it comes to trust, I trust the PA more than I trust the DA and I am not friends with any of them, I am talking about trust. I can work with both of them because I am not here for friendship,” Mashaba said.
“Coalition is not something any politician would want to have but we must accept that South Africa has entered an era of coalitions. When you are put in a coalition agreement, you look at the better devil.”
“We will work with the PA anytime, we will work with the DA anytime, and we will work with the Inkatha Freedom Party, African Christian Democratic Party, and the Freedom Front Plus anytime,” Mashaba said.
“We won’t work with them because we are friends with them, but once the votes have put you in a coalition arrangement, you have to put your arrogance behind you and look at the country.”
Tensions between the DA and ActionSA played out last year in the City of Johannesburg.
The two parties disagreed on whether the PA should be part of the multi-party charter with DA leader John Steenhuisen insisting the McKenzie-led party was untrustworthy for having entered into coalitions with the ANC.
Mashaba argued that the charter needed the PA to gain more of an advantage against the ANC in the ballots.
Mashaba, who resigned from the DA in 2019, also expressed distrust over a possible DA and ANC coalition. He said ActionSA would aggressively fight to get an outright majority in the upcoming elections, but they needed to be realistic about that happening.
“It is my wish that people can give us an outright majority, but will they? I think I’ll be too positive. A three-year-old party getting an outright majority? As we speak, there are millions of people who do not know about ActionSA.”
The party leader said he does not intend to stand as party candidate for Gauteng premier.
Mashaba’s prominence in Gauteng and his track record as a former mayor of the city of Johannesburg led to speculation that he would throw his hat in the ring — the party had been silent on who it would put up for the position.
The party has announced four premier candidates and has yet to announce premier candidates for Mpumalanga, Free State, Eastern Cape and Western Cape.
Mashaba told the M&G the party would announce an appropriate person to stand as a premier candidate in the province by February.
“I am not going to stand for Gauteng premier. South Africa does not have a Gauteng problem, we have a national problem. What would I achieve by winning Gauteng only? I can assure you if ActionSA is not going to be number one, it will be number two in Gauteng,” he said.
“You will see when we campaign, I am going to be spending 50% of my time in Gauteng because Gauteng is a very strategic province and people all over the country, their main family members, are based in Gauteng,” Mashaba added.
“When I campaign in Gauteng, it is the same as campaigning in KwaZulu-Natal, Venda or anywhere else in the country and that’s why you’ll see me spend time with our Gauteng premier candidate.”
Gauteng provincial leader Funzi Ngobeni has made public his ambitions of being the party’s Gauteng premier candidate, but Mashaba remained tight-lipped on whether they would consider him.
Mashaba dismissed allegations that he was running ActionSA as his business and had made policies that saw him as the alpha and omega of the party, preventing others from contesting him for leadership.
He has been accused by former party members, such as former Tshwane acting mayor Abel Tau and his wife Nkele Molapo, of getting rid of them without due process.
Former ActionSA Gauteng chairperson Bafana Baloyi also accused Mashaba of treating the party as his pet project, refusing to decentralise power, and allowing his driver to intimidate and threaten leaders who challenge his authority.
Mashaba said it was difficult to have an elective conference as the party was only three years old, however it was in the party’s constitution to do so.
“ActionSA is not a me-too product, we don’t do things [the way] everyone has done it before. Anyone who wants an elective conference, they are most welcome to go to political parties that want to have an elective conference just before the elections. We are a three-year-old party; was I expected to have a national conference with my family?”
Mashaba added: “It’s very clear that we would want to be national so that when we go to an elective conference, we could be at 60% or 70% of the branches of the country launched so that when you run an elective conference, it is a genuine conference. Right now, our focus was to put out structures without having to go to an elective conference.”